In books that I've come across and even in dictionaries, I've seen the word 「好きな」 translated as "favorite". I'm a little confused by this because 「好きです」 normally gets translated as "like", or in my mind, "is liked".
I'm wondering what is the Japanese idea behind the word 「好き」. For instance, in English, the ideas of "like", "love", and "favorite" all have a relationship, but at the same time are different. So I can say I like the colors red, blue, green, and yellow, and I love (especially like) the colors red and blue, but I can only say my favorite color is blue. There can only be one favorite since the idea itself implies that it is the #1 most liked thing.
When we were in school, if the teacher asked, "What is your favorite color," and you proceeded to rattle off a list of multiple colors, you would be corrected; the teacher would say, "Those are all colors that you like, but which one do you like the most?"
In Japanese, I understand that you have the terms 「好き」, 「大好き」, and 「一番好き」. When I look up 「好き」 on Kotobank, I see it translates 「好きな詩」 as "one's favorite poem". But how can this be translated as your favorite poem? Shouldn't 「好きな詩」 just be a poem that you like? Wouldn't your favorite poem be 「一番好きな詩」?
Returning to the color example, if someone asked 「好きな色は何ですか？」, would you respond with only one color, or would it also be acceptable to respond with more than one color?
Answer
「好きな～」 generally corresponds to "～ which one likes", and one can safely have multiple 好きな色 and 好きな食べ物.
好きな色は赤と黒です。
Some E-J dictionaries say "favorite" is "特に好きな" or "大好きな", which means the English adjective "favorite" is usually stronger than 好きな. And as far as I know, English has no single-word adjective which exactly matches 好きな. I think "favorite" is sometimes chosen because it is not practical to translate 好きな as "which I like" every time you see it.
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